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New Stem Cell Source - Your Bone Marrow
BoogieChile writes "ABC News is reporting that a team of researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, lead by Dr John Yu, are aiming to extract renewable stem cells from bone marrow - extracted from the patient him/herself - for a source of neural stem cells for treatment of brain cancers, Alzheimers and other neurological disorders.
Problem solved! Yipee!
New spinal column, anyone?" 'Course the story has no details - post anything else you can find below.
There goes my business plan for foetal farming. I guess I'll have to abort the whole crop.
More info here
and
here
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
It doesn't focus much on the technology used, but the point that adults have stem cells within them, and scientist can now obtain them without going the politically icky embryo route.
.. from my cold, dead hands!
Trolling is a art,
At MIT Tech Review
Enjoy.
I understood that this had been known to be an option for some time now. The issue at hand as I understand it is that these cells are potentially not as useful as embryonic stem cells. I assume beacuse they have already differentiated to a certain degree.
Not to say that this research is not of value but I don't know that it's safe to say that it solves the whole embryonic stem cell issue.
Am I remembering incorrectly?
Well, this is a tricky question. Although the article doesn't mention this directly, I'm sure that it's one of the problems they're going to encounter. Fetal stem cells are what they call totipotential, in that they have the ability to become any type of specialized cell in the body given the appropriate "signals." Stem cells in the adult bone marrow are slightly less capable of this, usually being called pluripotential. While they can differentiate into a wide number of cells, they are relatively committed to becoming some type of formed element in the blood or bone marrow. The challenge at this point will be attempting to coax the marrow stem cells into taking a neural development route, something they hadn't originally planned on doing.
-The Doc
Essentially, the embryonic stem cells have failed to produce very promising results because of rejection or tumor formation (in many cases). Adult stem cells, which are pluripotential (not totipotential), have no rejection problems because they are autologously donated. Searching Google on "bone marrow stem cells" produces a variety of results, like this plea for funding from a Russian biologist: Why cloning? or this from Science Daily or Bone Marrow Stem Cells can become almost anything.
Cedars-Sinai is pretty involved in stem cell research on a variety of levels. Do a search for stem cells on their site and you'll come up with tons of stuff.
They offer Stem Cell/Bone Marrow Transplantation as a part of their other transplantation services. Here is their FAQ about the process. http://www.csmc.edu/bloodmarrow/859.asp
Not exactly what the article is talking about though.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Fetal umbillical cord blood is rich in stem cells. If you're having a child it's worth looking into( Cord Blood Registry is a good source of information). One interesting thing to note is that stem cells harvested from cord blood can not only be used in the baby that produced them, but sometimes can be used in parents and siblings as well. This may be the case with other stem cells too, but I'm not sure.
You are correct, and this is currently being used to treat a variety of patients with "bone marrow failure" from illnesses not necessarily limited to leukemias. The big jump here is that they're hoping they can trick the bone marrow stem cells into thinking they can become neural cells, something not in the original game plan. Of course even if that is possible, whether or not we can actually harness this power to treat disease is left to be discovered. Given the possibilities, however, it's something I'd keep my fingers crossed on.
-The Doc
There is already a replacement to the embryonic stem cells: stem cells from the blood in Umbilical (Sp?) cords. If the goverment or a group of hospitals came together and saved the blood from the umbilical cords of all babies born, there wouldn't be a need form embryonic stem cell research. There are a couple of companies already storing cord blood, one of them is cryo-cell
There was an article in the Mpls Star Tribune 2 weeks ago about the University of Minnesota licensing the rights to technology for creating stem cells from human bone marrow to a biotech firm called Athersys. The U of M researchers published a paper about this procedure in the July 4th issue of Nature. Here is a link to an article (not abstract) [nature.com].
The new spines are reserved for politicians that are unable to do the right thing when faced with large sums of cash.
What's moral and ethical in 'research' constantly evolves.
Back in university, I did a pretty thorough study and report on Frederick Banting and how he discovered insulin. I took a little field trip down to the University of Toronto and thumbed through some of his actual research logs.
Quick backstory:
He expirimented on dogs, basically trying to figure out what the (at the time unknown) internal secretion of the pancreas was, what it did, and how to extract it. His expiriments were to basically remove a big chunk of the pancreas, leaving only the cells that produce the digestive juices, and see what happened. The dogs got diabetic. He figured a way to extract the juice (insulin) from the pancreas, gave it to the now diabetic dogs, and they lived.
Anyhow. His logs are full of really shaky, obvious stuff. He was either an amazing scientist, or he was cooking the books. One test animal starts off as a cocker spaniel, and is later a german shepherd, for instance.
It's pretty much known that he and some assistants would scour the streets at night, abducting stray animals for their expiriments.
Now, back on topic. His behaviours were highly unethical in many ways by todays standards. I don't see any university letting you dognap animals to test out theories on them, let alone replacing a test animal because another died in surgery and not making any sort of note of that.
But, he discovered insulin. If we could go back and stop his unethical research, perhaps millions would still be dying of what is now a managable disease because of his work. Do the ends justify the means?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ever had back problems fuck head? No? Go to hell. You have no idea what its like.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
are so quick to make that decision, do you want the mothers who cant afford their kids, or know they will be unable to raise them, to bring them to your door to pay for / love / raise them as your own??
;)). The choice is a deeply personal one, so it's not right for me to say one way or another why she made the choice she did, but I would like to think that it was influenced by the promises (made and delivered upon) that the rest of the family would help her raise the baby without the assistance of the scumbag father.
What if his answer is yes? Can't we agree that at least some women choose not to abort because they know that an adoptive family can be found?
My sister in law found herself in this situation (someone who reads my posts regularly is starting to be able to piece together her life story together by now
The real point here is that what you're accusing the other fellow of is hypocrisy. Even if he is, that doesn't make him wrong; if I say murder is wrong, and then kill someone, that doesn't make murder right.
Consider the fact that murder of a two year old solves the problem of a mother who can't afford her kids as well as abortion of a 6th month fetus solves the same problem. Simply because an idea solves a problem doesn't make it right either.
As far as the anybody else's damn business business, you're begging the question that the baby is a separate life. Clearly you don't think so, and he does, and so that's the point of debate.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
'Course the story has no details - post anything else you can find below.
Translation: This sounds neat. It might be another hoax, but then we do have a reputation to keep up. I holpe the readers come through and make this an interesting article, cause right now, we got crap...